With Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure having just released, lead designer Peter Ong and lead programmer Ryan Pijai have departed Electronic Arts and announced the creation of the independent studio DreamRift.

Based on Walt Disney's G-Force, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, the game revolves around a team of trained secret agent guinea pigs that take on a mission for the US government to stop an evil billionaire, who plans to destroy the world with household appliances.

Microsoft announced the 3rd annual Dream-Build-Play global game development competition that encourages aspiring and hobbyist developers to create new and innovative games for X360. The XNA Game Studio is getting updates later this spring so developers will be able to take advantage of new partner additions and Xbox Live features.

Last week Titmouse Games announced Seven Haunted Seas, but that seems not to be the only title in development. Based on a Heavy Metal magazine property, Fistful of Blood is an over-the-top action game about an Alien Bounty Huntress who comes to earth in search of the creature that killed her father, only to find herself caught in a blood feud between rival gangs of Vampires and Zombies.

R.U.S.E. is a strategy game in which the players use their brain as the ultimate weapon, fighting a war of perception, where the ability to deceive and mislead the enemy determines success. A first in a strategy game, R.U.S.E. reinvigorates the genre by using deception to give new-found depth to the game play.

P.U.R.E. is a real time strategy game set in a world where Humanity is attempting to wrest their devastated civilization from the evil AI known as the Overmind. The game features giant armies, a fast-paced gameplay, and awesome super-weapons.

Fight Night Round 4 features an all-new physics-based gameplay engine that brings the most authentic interpretation of the sweet science to the video game world. The action inside the ring will be faster than ever, delivering a true representation of the sport's incredible speed, accuracy, timing and power. According to Eurogamer, an FNR4 demo is expected in late May or early June.

Valve announced a new set of advanced features delivered in its free publishing and development suite Steamworks, headlined by Custom Executable Generation, a complimentary technology to the already existing anti-piracy solution offered in Steamworks.

BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger, developed by Guilty Gear studio Arc System Works, is a 2D fighter featuring twelve, extraordinarily detailed, hand-drawn characters in true HD glory, each with unique “Drive” attacks that can turn the tide of battle instantly.

Simutronics announced the release of HeroEngine 2009 Vol. 1, the only realtime collaborative development platform for massively multiplayer online games and virtual worlds, making it support more than 100,000 concurrent players in a single shard.